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Training for Muscular Endurance

Points of Interest:

Muscle Fibre Types

Factors Involved in Muscular Endurance Improvement

Training for Muscular Endurance

What about Genetics?

Example Workout for Muscular Endurance Training

Muscular endurance can be defined as your ability to repeat a physical action for a prolonged period of time. For example, a marathon runner or Tour de France cyclist must have great muscular endurance.

This is opposed to athletes who excel at muscular strength, like weightlifters or sprinters, where more explosive force is required over a shorter period of time.

This blog explains what muscular endurance is and how you can improve it.

Muscle fiber types

To understand muscular endurance, it is important to understand the muscle fiber types you have in your body and how they work.

Slow Twitch

As you begin to use your muscles for any physical activity, slow twitch muscle fibers are the first to respond. These fibers can sustain a low force over a long period of time.

Fast Twitch

When your muscles must endure a greater force than the slow-twitch muscle fibers can take, fast twitch muscle fibers are recruited. These fibers are larger and can generate higher amounts of force. These fibers will fatigue quickly and will require periods of rest.

Slow and Fast Twitch Activities

Depending on the activity you’re interested in, your body will need to be able to draw upon either slow or fast twitch muscle fibers.

When we are talking about improving muscular endurance, we are talking about improving our ability to perform slow twitch muscle activities for longer periods of time. Most activities don’t exercise exclusively one type of muscle or the other, but some activities do emphasize a specific type. You need to determine whether your goal is muscular endurance over a longer period of time, or muscular power over a shorter period of time.

For example, I am not an athlete and primarily perform gym-based activities to keep myself fit.

I balance my workouts between spinning twice a week and weightlifting three times a week.

You can’t grow more slow-twitch muscle fibers, but you can train them for better performance

You can’t train fast or slow-twitch muscle fibers in isolation, any activity will train both types

Certain activities will result in increasing the proportion of slow twitch muscle fibers in a muscle. This is because the number of capillaries in the area increase, allowing for greater flood flow, therefore enabling you to perform the activity over a longer period of time.

Choose activities that feature sustained isometric contractions with little-to-no joint movement, such as front planks, side planks and single-leg balance

Resistance training should include lighter weights and slower movement for high numbers of repetitions (more than 15)

Use circuit training, involving going from one exercise to the next with little to no rest

Include high repetitions of body weight exercises, such as Calisthenics

What about Genetics?

Jason R. Karp, M.S. states:

“For maximum results, train your athletes according to their genetic predisposition. For example, an athlete with a greater proportion of slow-twitch fibers would adapt better to running more weekly mileage and a muscular endurance program, using more repetitions of a lighter weight. Likewise, an athlete with a greater proportion of fast-twitch fibers would benefit more from sprint training and a muscular strength program, using fewer repetitions of a heavier weight.”

While this is the ideal way to train, it’s difficult to test whether you have a greater proportion of slow or fast-twitch fibers. Also, there is evidence that certain genes can indicate whether you’re better suited for endurance or strength.

I had my DNA tested and the results were that I was more genetically predisposed towards endurance. In reality, I enjoy strength training and really don’t care for cardio exercise. When I asked about this, the company said that most importantly everyone should do the forms of exercise they enjoy. But knowing that I’m predisposed to better endurance, I should keep that in mind as I do my strength training. So higher reps with lower weights might be a better way for me to train.

Example Workout for Muscular Endurance Training

Perform each exercise once, rest for 30 seconds, then move to the next. Weights should be in the 60% of your 1 rep max range.

Bottom Line

Muscular endurance activities include swimming, running, cycling and other similar activities that involve a repeated motion over a longer period of time. Training for better muscular endurance involves improving the performance of your slow-twitch muscle fibers. Performing low-load, high repetition exercises is the best way to do this.

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Author

This article was written by Tim Powell, fitness blogger for Shrinkinguy.com. He promotes tips for eating well, exercise and healthy living.